Phoenix And Talladega Myopia Redux

They were of course still talking about
Talladega entering Phoenix. Drivers and teams were "happy
to be at Phoenix." By the end of the weekend, there was little reason
for them to be.

Bobby Hamilton noted that the cars never
have tire or chassis problems at Daytona and Talladega – Phoenix and the other
tracks, on the other hand, are nothing but tire and chassis problems. And two
days of Phoenix racing saw multiple crashes, each involving hits as hard or
harder than any incurred in the "big ones." Indeed, hardly a race has
gone by without a high number of crashes.

Right
front tires blew out everywhere, causing Mike Mulhern to use the term
"frightening" to describe the day – his use of the term has worn out
its meaning, used at he has to describe crashes such as Johnny Benson’s hit at
Talladega, a hit common and survivable at any track regardless of what the data
recorders show.

The story of the race was Mike Wallace,
trying to get a ride for 2002 amid the near-certain closing of the #12 team
after this season. Wallace held on for a long time but could not beat Jeff
Burton, who became only the second multiple winner at Phoenix in Winston Cup.
Fords monopolized the race as they have almost every year since the track
entered NASCAR’s top series in 1988 – Fords failed to win only in 1990, 1994,
1996, and 1999. Indeed, counting the newly-added Grand National event, non-Fords
have only won five of seventeen NASCAR-sanctioned Phoenix races.

Some of the racing was quite good, but as
usual there wasn’t enough of it for the sport’s own good. Burton’s margin of
victory was big, and when it was over the race had scant effect on the points
race, going down to its ninth straight anticlimax of an ending.

And before the American 400 weekend,
NASCAR officials will meet with teams at Joe Gibbs’ shop to discuss options
for Daytona and Talladega next year. There are twelve options being
considered, but only one shows any promise –

Going back to 2000 aero rules, with a
60 degree spoiler and no roof spoiler – The drivers howled they could not
race with this package before, and the Grand National cars showed this year
they still can’t, and the risk of crashes is not affected at all.
Cutting the banking of the tracks –
this cannot work because the cars are too fast at ALL racetracks; plus lower
banking means harder impacts at worse angles.
Using the infield road course – as if
road racing’s history of bad crashes isn’t relevant to anything; and road
racing isn’t racing to begin with.
Shorter and flatter tracks, such a
1.75 miles – Haven’t we just seen that the cars are too fast EVERYWHERE?
Use painted lines to narrow the racing
grooves – taking away legitimate passing lanes adds nothing to safety.
Ban caution flag stops – This was done
in 1991, and did not make anything safer.
Order smaller gas tanks – Also not
safer.
Go to bigger boxier cars with more
drag – The April Talladega test of a bigger greenhouse saw the car go
faster; counters that this can be corrected with a larger rear spoiler
ignore that the extra drag of a bigger greenhouse will be massaged out of
the cars by the teams without problem – this is why the Trucks are almost as
fast as the cars at almost all racetracks and why restrictor plates to the
Trucks at Daytona are inevitable.
Let teams raise and lower the rear
spoiler as desired – They will lower them to angles that guarantee the cars
will break loose and crash; and the fiasco over trick shocks showed the
folly of letting teams do such a thing.
Shave down force off the cars so the
drivers have to lift for the corners – The 5&5 rule all over again. It
failed in 1993, in 1998, and will fail if tried again in 2002.

Only one consideration has any merit – a
no-blocking rule. It works for the IRL and it has seen thrilling pack races week
after week.

The other changes involve the myopia of a
self-satisfied generation of drivers made such by the vast monetary compensation
they get. "What’s happened now is these guys don’t want to go three wide
twelve rows deep," Hamilton said before Phoenix. This echoes Richard
Childress’ August comments, and the basic truth here comes out in Mark
Martin’s self-pitying speech at the Journal. Martin fells the 2000 Daytona
500 was the best plate race ever – and offers nothing in the way of reason to
believe such – that Speedweeks ran with basically the same rules used in the
500, and there were crashes galore all week – only the Trucks had great racing,
and they had the worst crashes of all despite not running restrictor plates.

So Martin’s self-pity is risible and worth
dismissing. Truth of the matter is that no alternative works better than the
present package of the roof spoiler and wicker, and NASCAR should tell the
drivers that there can’t be racing without this package.

Jack Roush concludes by saying NASCAR
needs to create a better mental environment at Daytona and Talladega – sorry,
but that’s the team’s job, not NASCAR’s. The drivers are supposed to want to
race; that they don’t reflects poorly on them.